Jennifer Trosper

Jennifer Harris Trosper is a well-traveled Trojan. On her way to Mars, she passed through the USC School of Engineering, not to mention the Ukraine, Mexico, and Peru.

Trosper received her master’s degree in aerospace engineering from USC in 1999, and is currently the lead systems engineer on the Mars Rovers Project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The goal of the ambitious project is to land two powerful new rovers on different areas of Mars in 2004. Each spacecraft will use a parachute and retrorockets to slow its approach to Mars, and then airbags will cushion the landing, bouncing the lander along the planet’s surface until it stops. Then the bags will deflate, petals will open up to upright the lander, and the Mars Rover, which is capable of covering 100 meters per day, will roll out to explore the Red Planet.

After two failed missions to Mars, and an investment of $700 million in the Mars Rovers Project, there will be considerable pressure for success on JPL, on NASA, and on Trosper.

“It has to work. Everybody is looking at what we are doing because we failed the last two missions to Mars. From a risk point of view, it is high risk because we’re moving so fast.” She grimaces and then smiles, “but it has to work.” The first launch is scheduled for May 30, 2003. “Whatever we have built and tested by May 30th goes on top of that rocket, and it goes to Mars,” she says. “That’s why it’s so important to ensure we have done everything necessary to test the vehicle in flight-like environments and be certain that it will work.”

Trosper is an engineer who manages. She has learned that precise communications, which help everyone to understand how their piece fits into the whole, are as important as all the technical skills she learned in school. The days when a few smart guys, and they were all guys, could grasp all the technical details of a space project are long gone.

From all over the world, perhaps a thousand engineers and other technicians are designing the smaller systems, building hardware, assembling packages of instruments, calculating trajectories and writing reams of software for the Mars Rovers Project. These have been tested individually, but how well will everything work in concert?

For example, when the launch vehicle pitches the spinning and wobbling spacecraft in the direction of where Mars will be seven months later, its trajectory will undoubtedly need corrections.

“We’ll have to damp out all the rates that aren’t sending the Rover in the right direction. There are going to be misalignments. There are going to be errors,” says Trosper. “The only information we’ll have is what we told it to send down to earth, so we have to verify that we’ve designed it correctly.”

To do this, Trosper organizes a test in during which the spacecraft star scanner is stimulated with pulses of light that simulate the sun and stars from the location in space where the spacecraft will be after the real launch. Can the attitude control software determine the location of the sun and identify the stars accurately? While the vehicle is moving and spinning, will its computer and software understand where the spacecraft is, and accurately perform the commands from the ground controllers to fire the thrusters at the right time, in the right direction and for the right duration?

“When we designed it, we said ‘Here’s the information that we think we’ll need on the ground to assess how that vehicle is doing,’” she says. “We also have a limited amount of bandwidth to work with.”

This is just one of several major tests that she’ll run and all the time a voice in the background is whispering, “it has to work.” She seems uniquely prepared to handle the pressure.

Trosper grew up in rural Ohio where her father was an engineer in the auto industry. A talented pianist as a child, Trosper attended a summer music camp. By the end of summer, she knew that music would not be her life’s work. But what would be? Her father had worked in southern California on some of the early rockets, particularly Nike-Zeus and Thor. There were pictures on the wall of their den and fascinating stories about tests at White Sands. Aerospace engineering seemed like an exciting major.

Trosper received her undergraduate degree from MIT. A scholar-athlete, in 1989, her senior year, she captained the volleyball team that went to the Division 3 NCAA tournament, and later became the first MIT graduate inducted into the Verizon Academic All-America Hall of Fame.

At JPL, Trosper started as a power subsystem engineer, contributing to the development of the Cassini spacecraft, now on its way to Saturn. She began moving into management with the successful Mars Pathfinder project, and around this time, started working toward her master’s degree at USC.

July 4, 1997, Pathfinder’s first spectacular day of successes on Mars was a glorious personal day for her. Trosper, who at that time was still Jennifer Harris, was the flight director seen by millions on television. Her photograph appeared in Parade magazine and she received many congratulatory letters from people around the world. One such letter was from a Dallas woman who asked if her son, an Air Force pilot, named Randy Trosper might have a tour of the lab. Jennifer Harris agreed, and subsequently became Jennifer Harris Trosper.

There is yet another dimension to Trosper. In 1994, she took a leave of absence from JPL to go to the Ukraine with a church group. She taught Bible study and English at a business school in an area where there were few teachers and a surplus of economically battered, yet friendly people.

“It could be an all-day struggle just to find something that you could actually eat,” she says, “but the people were wonderful. I had some of the most stimulating conversations of my life.”

She spent another summer in a Peruvian camp for homeless children putting thatch roofs on cabins. And she makes regular weekend trips to Mexico to help build houses for families living in cardboard boxes.

“When I started doing mission trips, I realized how much it had changed my perspective,” she says. “I think we are placed here to do great things, like work on a team that sends vehicles to Mars. That’s an opportunity that’s been presented to me by God. It’s also important to realize that there are those less fortunate who don’t have the opportunity to work on spacecraft to Mars, and it’s very important to help those folks also.”

And yes, the voice could be right. The mission could fail. “In the grand scheme, I think we’ll make it through,” she says. It seems if anyone can, it’s Jennifer Harris Trosper.